The Life and Times of Jeff Squyres

Yoda says: go team!

I was in San Jose, CA at Cisco.node0 all last week for an MPI Forum meeting, Open MPI engineering meeting, and general Cisco Stuff™.

It’s amusing to me that Californians generally don’t really know how to respond to the casual passing-on-the-street “Good morning” / “Good afternoon” / “Good evening” salutation. Most look at you kinda weird; some get visibly flustered while sputtering out an unintelligible reply. I had to admit that their reactions are so much of a guilty pleasure that I probably greet random strangers more than usual while I’m in California. It’s the little things in life, you know? ☺

Another thing I’ve noticed is that the number of people using laptops in the San Jose airport (SJC) is noticeably (and significantly) higher than in other airports. This makes sense; SJC is right in the heart of Silicon Valley, of course. Plus, SJC has free wifi (woot!). I’ve also noticed (very unscientifically) that among cell phones that people carry, I’m seeing more iPhones than not. My observations may be skewed as a by-product of the fact that I spend a good deal of time in the California bay area, but I’m pretty sure that I’m seeing a preponderance of iPhones everywhere.

UPDATE: Rich M. sent me an extremely amusing reply to the Californian part of this entry:

While certainly true in NORTHERN California, I’m not sure this is true of ALL of California. In LA they’d probably flip you the bird, but in San Diego you would likely get a “hi” back. ☺